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Mission Statement

Our group strives to provide optimal care for your digestive health problems in an environment in which you can be comfortable and feel confident you are getting the best advice and the most effective treatments.

We are committed to:

• Listening to you: adequate time to assess your problem.
• Safe, effective and comfortable GI procedures in the highest quality endoscopy centers
• Keeping our staff focused on your needs, comfort and on timely access to care
• Working with carefully chosen physician colleagues, hospitals, radiology and labs
• Keeping your care as affordable as possible
• Continuously improving quality in what we know, how we serve you, and in the outcomes of what we do

Have a question?

Search through our library of gastro topics...coming soon; your suggestions welcome too!.

1. Location: Our office is 1 block South of California Blvd., 1 block west of Arroyo Parkway, ½ mile south of Old Town Pasadena. We are one block from the Fillmore Station on the Gold Line Metro. OUR BUILDING IS STRICTLY NO SMOKING

Click here for door-to-door driving directions

2. Parking: underneath our building (sorry, no validation!) There is additional parking on street, nearby lots, & the Metro lot on South Raymond a block down from us.

3. Our Office Hours are Mondays-Fridays, 8am-noon and 1 pm-5 pm, closed weekends. Patients are seen by appointment only (please, no walk-in's, we typically cannot accommodate unplanned visits!) Appointment types: OUR SERVICES

4. Our Billing Service: for billing inquiries, contact (626) 463-1047 Mon-Friday 8am-5 pm; or inquire via our PATIENT PORTAL for paying bills on line and emailing questions to our billing service.

5. Schedule. We do our best to stay on our schedule, although emergencies sometimes arise. If we are seriously delayed, we will try to notify you beforehand. Please assist us by BEING ON TIME for your appointments. Infrequently, patients may be taken out of turn, in an emergency; we ask your understanding.

6. CANCELLING AN APPOINTMENT
If you are unable to keep your appointment or are going to be late, please call our office as soon as possible. This courtesy allows us to be of service to other patients. CANCELLATIONS WITHOUT ANY NOTICE ARE SUBJECT TO A CHARGE, because we cannot use the time for other patients.

7. YOUR APPOINTMENT:
On your first visit, a medical chart and billing records are started. BRING YOUR REGISTRATION SHEET, FILLED OUT, WITH YOU, and YOUR INSURANCE CARD, and any AUTHORIZATION you require. After your exam, we may ask your permission to transfer some of your records from other doctors. We do our best to stay on our schedule, although emergencies sometimes arise. If we are seriously delayed, we will try to notify you beforehand. Please assist us by BEING ON TIME for your appointments. Infrequently, patients may be taken out of turn, in an emergency; we ask your understanding.

8. TELEPHONE CALLS & e-MAILS
Please feel free to call our office if you have any questions regarding your condition, medication, tests, preparation or treatment. Our staff are specially trained to answer many questions, arrange refills, schedule procedures, etc. If it is necessary for you to speak to one of us personally, our staff will take your message and we will return your call as soon as our schedule permits -- which is many times AFTER HOURS, so be sure we have an evening phone or cell phone. For most brief telephone consultations, there is no charge. For complex or lengthy consultation, a charge is customary, and is covered by some insurance plans. We do sometimes arrange for a telephone followup visit, which are scheduled just like any appointment. Very commonly, we may ask you to call us with a report of your condition or response to treatment, INSTEAD of requiring a followup office visit -- this is a courtesy to you, so treat this just like an appointment in importance. Many diseases have similar symptoms, or treatment needs may change, so if you have developed a new problem or an old problem recurs, please understand the need for an exam in the office. Also, we cannot legally refill medications indefinitely without seeing you periodically.

E-MAIL sent to our address [email protected] are responded to in 24-48 hours, NOT immediately, so these are NOT for urgent issues!!

9. Age range: our patients must be at least 16 years of age; if needed, we can refer to pediatric gastroenterologists in our community or at major medical centers

10. Insurances with which we are contracted (in-network, with contracted discount rates):
a. Medicare
b. Anthem Blue Cross (WellPoint)
c. Blue Shield of Calif.
d. Aetna
e. CIGNA
f. HealthNet
g. Pacificare

h. UnitedHealth Care

i. Most ALL PPO plans...call us or check your plan website!
j.. The plans contracting with HealthCare Partners Medical Group
k. The plans contracting with Physicians Associates of the San Gabriel Valley

Out of Network    If we're not contracted with your plan, that doesn't mean it will cost you too much to see us. Your plans generally have benefits to you for out-of-network care, and we limit our fees to what we would typically accept under our existing contracts or from Medicare. You may also find that if you have a colonoscopy or other procedure at Pasadena Endoscopy Center (PEC), the facility may be in network. In fact, even if PEC is out of network, using an outpatient endoscopy center is so much less expensive than a hospital outpatient facility that out of pocket costs are LESS going out of network to PEC than in network to a hospital endoscopy lab. We'll try to help you figure these things out.

INSURANCE PLAN LINKS

11. Our office
Our building opened in 2007 and was designed by its physicians to best serve you. Located a convenient block from Huntington Hospital and a block from the Fillmore Station on the Gold Line Metro, we're convenient to Freeway access from the 10, 134 and 210, and just south of Old Town in Pasadena. We have radiology facilities within the building, ISP Imaging, and a lab station for Primex Laboratories. There are branches of Quest and Labcorp nearby.

12. Our Pasadena Endoscopy Center All of us are partners/part owners of the Pasadena Endoscopy Center, which opened in 2002 with 10 physicians who designed and manage the Center, to provide state-of-the art gastrointestinal services. The Center is affiliated with Huntington Hospital but is an independent privately run center. PEC has three times obtained the maximum length possible for its accreditation, because of the quality of care provided .

13. Our associates: We refer to laboratory, radiology and other specialty facilities which we judge can provide the highest quality of care and service for you. We work within your insurance network requirements whenever possible; if we believe your care would be better delivered by another provider not in your network, we'll advise you accordingly and work to keep your services affordable and available to you.
14. Laboratories we work with include Quest Labs, Labcorp, Primex and any other for your convenience
LABS, RADIOLOGY & REFERRALS
When needed, we provide you with the order forms and any instructions for lab tests or Xray and scan tests, and inform you where your need to go. We'll schedule many of the special tests you need while you are at the office. We instruct you when to call us about results and followup treatment. Copies are available on request, and we send copies of all pertinent results to your primary or referring physician. The labs and radiology facilities bill you or your insurance for their own services; similarly, any tissue samples taken during an endoscopy procedure are sent to a qualified pathology, who will bill separately for their services.

15. Radiology facilities we work with include Huntington Hospital's affiliated radiologists (Hill Medical Radiology), ISP (in our building, with other offices at Glendale Adventist, St Joseph's in Burbank and elsewhere), Madison Radiology, Oaktree Imaging, Arcadia Radiology, Pacific Imaging and others.

16. University Centers and academic Centers: We work closely with specialists in GI and many other fields at such places as UCLA, USC University Hospital, Norris Cancer Hospital, City of Hope, Cedars Sinai. By our training our physicians have maintained connections to many of these institutions.

17. PRESCRIPTION REFILLS:
Please have your pharmacy call us for refills during regular office hours rather than placing the call yourself. Please give the pharmacist the prescription number and the name, strength and frequency of dosage of each medication the way you take them, plus the number of pills you need. If they call us directly on our special message line, or reach us on-line, we can quickly and accurately fill your prescriptions. If your pharmacist tells you that your health plan won't cover what you need, or wants you to fill an alternative medication or generic, have the pharmacist call to discuss whether it is appropriate to change. If some change in medication is NOT WORKING OUT for you for some reason, CALL TO LET US KNOW! We provide many of our prescriptions via electronic prescribing so the Rx goes directly to your pharmacy or benefit manager company, without you having to drop off a slip! We hope you find this convenient.

18. CHILDREN:
Your visit with us should generally be personal, or shared with just your spouse or companion only. So, as needed, please provide someone to supervise younger children AT HOME. There are times a FAMILY CONFERENCE is necessary and we will accommodate these as feasible.

19. CONFIDENTIALITY:
Your medical record is strictly private. No information about your condition will be given to your employer, friends, relatives or immediate family without your permission. We have a more detailed Privacy Policy if you would like a copy sent to you.